--- title: "The Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem — Hirschprung 2019" description: "This is not an NLP paper. It is an English translation, by Yosef D. Robinson, of a Yiddish article that Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung published in Montreal's…" authors: ["Pinchas Hirschprung"] year: 2019 venue: "Canadian Jewish Studies 27" source: "https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/article/view/40118" doi: "10.25071/1916-0925.40118" licence: "CC BY-NC-ND (journal licence per DOAJ; Canadian Jewish Studies)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hirschprung-2019-babylonian-talmud-jerusalem-talmud-quebec/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hirschprung-2019-babylonian-talmud-jerusalem-talmud-quebec/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2019/page/5/) / The Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, and the “Quebec Talmud”: A response to the anti-Jewish attack in a “pious” Quebec newspaper” # The Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, and the “Quebec Talmud”: A response to the anti-Jewish attack in a “pious” Quebec newspaper” **Authors:** Pinchas Hirschprung · **Year:** 2019 · **Venue:** Canadian Jewish Studies 27 · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-ND (journal licence per DOAJ; Canadian Jewish Studies)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.40118) · [PDF](https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/article/download/40118/36302) · [DOI 10.25071/1916-0925.40118](https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.40118) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2959596755) **Citations:** 0 citations (openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14) ## Summary This is not an NLP paper. It is an English translation, by Yosef D. Robinson, of a Yiddish article that Rabbi Pinchas Hirschprung published in Montreal's *Keneder Adler* on 2 October 1942. Canadian Jewish Studies republished it in 2019. Hirschprung was replying to articles by Rev. Père Bonaventure Péloquin in *l'Action Catholique*, which claimed to quote the Talmud as proof that Jewish law is hostile to Christians. Hirschprung sorts the priest's quotations into two kinds: some do not exist in the Talmud at all, and others were bent in translation until they meant something else. He answers with a dense set of precisely located counter-passages from the Talmud, Midrash, Tosefta and later codes. These cover brotherhood with gentiles, honouring non-Jewish sages and kings, a ban on robbing non-Jews, and charity to the gentile poor and sick. He then explains the rare harsh statements as reactions to Roman persecution, and he argues that the term *minim* means slanderers and enemies, not Christians. The piece matters as wartime documentation of how a scholar answered antisemitic misquotation by going back to the sources. ## Key points - The original appeared on 2 Oct 1942 in *The Keneder Adler* (Montreal), during the war and the Vichy deportations. B.G. Sack's articles and editor Israel Rabinovitch's column prompted it. - The author describes the priest's citations as a "Quebec Talmud": partly invented, partly distorted by translation. - His counter-evidence includes: - Berakhot 17a: keeping peace with gentiles. - Pesahim 94b: gentile astronomy judged more accurate. - Sanhedrin 59a: a non-Jew engaged in Torah study is likened to a High Priest. - Gittin 61a: supporting the gentile poor and visiting the gentile sick. - Tosefta Bava Kamma 10: robbing a non-Jew is worse than robbing a Jew. - Sukkah 55b: 70 oxen offered for the 70 nations. - Harsh passages are set against persecution, for example the Roman decree in Gittin 55b and the Hadrian story in Lamentations Rabbah. - The translator built the English renderings of the Hebrew and Aramaic texts on the Soncino Talmud, Sefaria.org, the Artscroll editions and the Koren prayer book. ## Interesting ideas - **Two kinds of false quotation.** The author separates quotes that are absent from the source from quotes that exist but were distorted in translation, because each needs a different rebuttal. — For Mova (answer): A QA reader checking a claimed quote could return one of two verdicts, "not in source" or "in source but meaning changed", each backed by an explicit pointer into the text. - **Exact source locations.** Every claim is anchored to a precise reference (tractate, folio, chapter), so any reader can check it independently. — For Mova (world): Each entity or state in the text world could carry a span-level provenance link, so an explanation always points back to the exact sentence that licensed it. - **One word changes the reading.** The Berakhot 10a reading turns on whether the verse wishes the end of *sinners* or of *sins*. — For Mova (frames): Frame extraction should keep the exact lexical filler of a role (agent versus abstract act), since swapping a person for an action reverses who is targeted. - **Term sense in context.** Hirschprung argues that *minim* refers to slanderers and enemies, not Christians in general. — For Mova (world): Mapping a term to WordNet or Wikidata should use the term's period and context before linking it, rather than defaulting to the most common modern sense. - **Statements read against their circumstances.** Harsh remarks are interpreted in light of the oppression their speakers were living through, not as general rules. — For Mova (frames): Pragmatic analysis could attach speaker situation and stance to an utterance, so a reaction to a specific event is not promoted to a universal claim in the world model. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/) ## Cite The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @article{hirschprung2019babylonian, title = {{The Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud, and the “Quebec Talmud”: A response to the anti-Jewish attack in a “pious” Quebec newspaper”}}, author = {Hirschprung, Pinchas}, journal = {Canadian Jewish Studies 27}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.25071/1916-0925.40118}, url = {https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.40118} } ``` - [← previous Text-Fabric: handling Biblical data with IKEA logistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/hbo-2019-roorda-text-fabric-handling-biblical-data/) - [next → The BEA-2019 Shared Task on Grammatical Error Correction](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/bryant-2019-bea-2019-shared-task-grammatical/) - [↑ back to papers of 2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2019/page/5/)